NRA calls for armed police officer in every school

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Trackbacks/Pings

Comments

I think having police in every school is total waste of money. There are 10′s of thousands of schools, and the incidence rate of these horrendous crimes is very very low. I would be more likely to support training the principal, and volunteer teachers to have fire arm training. And have fire arms at the ready with bio-metric security safes.

Dasher on December 21, 2012 at 12:34 PM

You do make a good point. A lot of schools in high-crime areas already have a permanent police presence, whereas these school shootings often seem to occur in rural or suburban areas that have very low crime rates and/or very few incidents of gang activity. The visible presence, however, of a uniformed officer might be enough to deter most would-be shooters.

This at least starts turning the discussion to a serious solution. Not sure why police are needed if there are already plenty of teachers that could carry concealed handguns into these killing zones, I mean schools, to protect in ocent lives.

Poor rural counties won’t have the resources to spare, but wealthier suburbs like Newtown, CT will. The coastal media establishment really doesn’t care all that much if someone shoots up a school in a deep red state where a bunch of white rednecks who vote Republican send their kids; it’s when the shooting happens in one of their upper middle class enlightened deep blue suburbs that it becomes a national crisis.

There’s been armed guards and security checkpoints at some urban schools for years, here in Dallas the school district even has it’s own police force, nobody has a problem with those, not sure why they’d have a problem with these. Just replacing the gun free zone signs with armed teachers on premises signs would be a good deterrent.

It’d also be nice to see the sensible states that can’t afford this kind of window dressing to follow Kansas’s lead and pass a law allowing teachers with a CHL to carry at school. It’s a neater and more realistic solution than posting cops everywhere.

AND allow any teacher that is permitted to conceal or carry to bring on the property. Either keep it in their car or install a lock box in the classroom of any teacher that is properly permitted to have a gun.

That’s like carrying with an empty chamber. If you need the gun you’re going to die.
It might work if the teacher stayed next to the box all the time. What if they’re in the cafeteria?
They should keep it in a holster on their person. The more easily and quickly the gun can be brought to bear the better.
There is no danger from someone who is trained and proficient in handling firearms carrying one wherever they go.

Don’t they have guns with a keypad that you can just type in 3 digits and it arms?

No. That’s a tooth fairy liberal fantasy.
Even if they were real I wouldn’t want one. Under the stress of a life and death situation fine motor skills go away and typing even just three numbers into a keypad can become impossible.

My area is using retired state police. Perhaps they could volunteer their time to make up for the fact that they put in huge amounts of overtime and get promotions the year before they retire in order to have their pensions puffed up as much as possible. They can redeem themselves by volunteering to protect our children.

It’d also be nice to see the sensible states that can’t afford this kind of window dressing to follow Kansas’s lead and pass a law allowing teachers with a CHL to carry at school. It’s a neater and more realistic solution than posting cops everywhere.

CorporatePiggy on December 21, 2012 at 12:59 PM

That strikes me as a valid solution for more rural areas, where people are less likely to hate and fear guns in such a knee-jerk fashion. Also, for a long time, a lot of wealthier towns have resisted police presence at the schools because it would imply that the town has a crime or gang problem, and then property values would decline.

“We don’t need cops or metal detectors at our schools in River City. That’s only for troubled areas like Gary, Indiana.”

I have another solution. Get rid of public schools. Private schools will hire adequate security.

legalimmigrant on December 21, 2012 at 1:07 PM

Exactly. Private schools having armed security for protection of students/faculty while public schools probably won’t. Where do you think parents would want their kids to go? The school that takes safety seriously, or the “gun-free zones” that get shot up? Then any GOP worth anything could bring up school vouchers and watch the Dems squirm.

I think having police in every school is total waste of money. There are 10′s of thousands of schools, and the incidence rate of these horrendous crimes is very very low. I would be more likely to support training the principal, and volunteer teachers to have fire arm training. And have fire arms at the ready with bio-metric security safes.

Dasher on December 21, 2012 at 12:34 PM

this is another good idea too. if not a police officer then SOMEONE working at every school should have a gun. (preferably at least two people.)

I agree it’s a waste of money, but I can understand their strategy. First, you’ll draw more support for armed police than for armed teachers, et al, as more people will trust, and be more comfortable with, the former than the latter. That makes it more achievable.

Second, it will achieve the objective as well or better than anything else. It can be more swiftly implemented to the satisfaction of the most people and can evolve more readily to school employees when the ruckus over the issue settles down.

Third, it increases the likelihood of forestalling other, useless feel good measures and it also removes the most emotionally animating and gun-grabbing instigating of the gun-free zones.

Fourth, the money spent on it will be only a small fraction of the policies put into place otherwise.

I don’t especially care for it, but it’s a good proposal. I’d be inclined to add to it by suggesting we work over time to establish police stations and substations next to schools and hard wire alarms right from the school to the police station and bypass the delays inherent with going through 911 dispatchers.

The most practical and fiscally responsible solution is to arm the teachers and/ or other school personnel. Having full- time police or security officers assigned to high schools might make sense because there is plenty of other stuff for them to be doing during the school day in order to keep the peace. Having a full- time person whose only responsibility is to protect an elementary school from the one- in- a- million chance that a lunatic might show up would be a waste of resources. Allowing other personnel who have other primary duties to also be armed is actually a pretty efficient solution. I think it should look like this:

1. Allow school personnell who volunteer to do so the right to bring personally own firearms to campus. They will form the school’s “Rapid Response Team.” The key word is that they must be volunteers. Some idiot legistator in VA has apparently proposed a bill requiring teachers to be armed. That’s just stupid. People need to reflect on the responsibility of protecting the kids and choose to do it for themselves.

2. Have the members of the “Rapid Response Team” apply for concealed carry permits in the states where permits are allowed. This will get them an extra criminal background check and require them to have a basic understanding of firearms and the laws governing their use in their state. The school district could reimburse the volunteers after the course was completed for the cost of the license fees.

3. Have them complete 40 hours of training with local law enforcement that covers the use of their firearms, basic building search and response to active shooters techniques, some minimum combat first aid skills, etc. You’re not going to turn them into a SWAT team, but you want to give them some training that might help them survive. (What is cover vs. concealment, for example.)

4. Install a locker in these teachers’ classrooms for them to secure their firearms in each morning when they arrive for the day. Give them each a bullet proof vest with a carrier in some bright Day- glo color that will identify them to each other as well as responding law enforcement officers that they keep in the locker along with First Aid supplies.

5. Have them qualify with their weapons twice a year. Make the qualification course harder than the so- easy- a- blind- person- can- pass- it courses that are used to qualify for a CCDW permit.

Time after time with these mass shootings we see that the suspect either surrenders or kills himself almost immediately after he is confronted by an armed defender. The sooner that someone is able to engage one of these lunatics, the sooner the killing stops.